With conditions looking ideal for an inshore pinkie dash this afternoon, it was too good an opportunity to miss.  It is important to test your theories about how and when to catch them in close, plus I had the shredded pilchard I was keen to try, so we headed out from Hillarys mid arvo to sound around and find a likely location to set up for the evening.

The SW wind was a little uncomfortable and it was choppy but certainly fishable.  For the first hour or so the fish didn’t “play the game” at all.  It was probably as slow as I have experienced for a long time as the pickers weren’t even biting.  It was a matter of trust the burley, trust the techniques and have patience.  As the sun started to set the bite changed dramatically.

The first capture was an Eagle Ray, and don’t these things go hard.  Then the Skippy came in and the bottom rig was being hammered by fish up to a kilo – they go hard too.  I was using the “Big Angry Fish” release clip with my floater and not long after there was a slight “thud” as the braid pulled away and solid line was being taken from the open spool.  Set the hooks and it didn’t take long to have a good idea what was on the end.  A nice pinkie, certainly not huge, and a good sign.

I kept feeding the shred and burley out and we had pinkie mayhem for a while – it was all about them taking the pilchards.  I did miss a few fish through “operator error” but managed to land this nice specimen.

I gut hooked this fish so lost my rig.  With no time to tie another one (no stock of my preferred rig at the shop as they have sold out) I had to use a single hook floater.  Harder to hook the fish with a single 2/0 and I did have a lot of “munched” bait come back after short runs.  You don’t get long with the feeding school bite, and I did eventually get a solid hook up.  Another nice fish and this one was lip hooked.

I had my bag already so it was good to release the fish.  It was in excellent condition so no doubt will survive as it swam off very strongly.  We have a freezer of vacuum sealed fine table fish of various species, I don’t eat fish, so plan to release most pinkies that I catch from now on.  I will only keep my bag of Snapper when others will eat it fresh. 

The bite slowed, the Snook came in so it was time to call it a night.  How lucky are we to have this fishery at our doorstep!